


Modo de volar

by Selden



Category: 18th & 19th Century CE RPF, Historical RPF
Genre: Gen, Horror, Horror-house, Horror-paintings, sorry goya
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-01
Updated: 2015-05-01
Packaged: 2018-03-26 14:36:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,204
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3854362
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Selden/pseuds/Selden
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><a href="http://historyfest.dreamwidth.org/589.html?thread=46669#cmt46669"><i>The sleep of reason produces monsters</i></a>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Modo de volar

**Author's Note:**

> For the prompt above.
> 
> This fic is terribly unfair to Goya, who by all accounts took a kind interest in the daughter of his housekeeper Leocadia Zorilla de Weiss (though he failed to provide securely for either of them after his death). This daughter, Rosario, did indeed have an interest in painting, which Goya enthusiastically encouraged. In 1842 she was appointed drawing teacher to Queen Isabel II. 
> 
> Leocadia may or may not have been his mistress; Rosario may or may not have been his daughter. This fic is set during the years between 1819 and 1824, when the elderly Goya was living just outside Madrid and producing the sequence of works later known as [_The Black Paintings_](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Paintings) .
> 
> Goya did indeed flee royal persecution of Spanish liberals in 1824. He headed for France, where Leocadia and Rosario later joined him. No wells or Roald Dahl rip-offs were involved.
> 
> The title is from [this](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_disparates#/media/File:Prado_-_Los_Disparates_%281864%29_-_No._13_-_Modo_de_volar.jpg) Goya print.
> 
> Any inaccuracies are my own.
> 
> \---

 

He is painting my dress black. And my face as well, or at least putting it under a veil. Working quick as you please, twitch twitch twitch with the little brush on the wall.

"You look like a fine lady, Mama," said Rosario when she saw it first. A lady leaning againt her own chimney mantel, thinking fine thoughts. Not about the girl chopping too many onions for supper or the house always smelling of paint or what they are saying about me in the city.

The lady in the painting is almost the same size as Rosario, when you think about it. Not such a good likeness, but then he is an old man, blear-eyed. Horny as a goat a few years ago, but no more. Now he stays out of the city and paints on the walls.

It's as if this house was waiting for him. _The Deaf Man's House_ : it was already named for him when he bought it. Sixty thousand reales in cash, from those twitchy old fingers. More than my husband ever held, and no pinching me black and blue with them. Just greasy shadows of paint that take scrubbing to get off.

"She has your eyes," I say, pushing Rosario forwards. For all he knows she does. He grins down at her and puts his dirty hand in her hair. She is always coming to me with paint on her dress, under her nails. She brings me an etching with words in English underneath; I tell her how should I be able to read such stuff. It shows men and women round a table, young lovers giving each other the eye while an ugly old man does something to a bird in a glass bowl. Killing it, perhaps. A little girl watches with her face screwed up.

Some of the paintings are not right for a young girl to live around, I tell him. There is a pretty picture of a bridge, and a painting from the Bible. But on the other side of the door from where I stand under my veil there is a nasty picture of a devil-thing shouting into the ear of an old man.

"Nasty," I tell him. " _Nasty_."

He doesn't hear. Shouting in his ear; I see how it is. But I already left my husband to pinch away at himself in the city, and Rosario is happy here. Running through the fields, bringing back big brown eggs from where the hens have tried to hide them. Bobbing bright slices of lemon in a bowl of water in the kitchen. Leaning over the well in the courtyard, looking down into the wet dark.

 

She looks at the paintings as well. They're all over the walls; how could she not?

Some of the brushes he uses are so wide they're like shovels, lifting paint thick and real onto the plaster like sausage-meat.

Witches squat in front of goat-head Satan, watching with little stabs of white for eyes. Ugly old women float over a brown landscape. A man floats with them, trussed up like a chicken for the pot; the women hold a doll; a looking-glass; sharp shears. Witches. They are very big, or floating very high. He paints away a figure dancing; instead a giant eats a little man done all in red and white like a fatty piece of ham. He paints in the background, black.

Rosario says they are from the Romans. She is holding a brush; I pluck it out of her hand. Dirty, I tell her. You'll get yourself dirty.

A dog looks sadly up out of the picture, only its head poking up into view. More ugly people float. He likes that. He made us stop and watch, once, in the sun, while village women played the game of tossing a doll in a blanket, the _pelele_ , up and up, again and again. The straw arms and legs moved like a dead thing, and I saw him slipping them a coin not to stop.

He says we'll have to move soon, move out of the country. In the city, they are arresting Freemasons, confiscating every last thing people own. The king is angry, they say.

 

Rosario climbs up on the edge of the well; jumps down onto the stones of the courtyard. Again and again, skirts billowing. He puts his hand on my shoulder; tells me he will look after her. His mouth opens up like a black hole.

I go to the door, tell Rosario to come inside. The sun will turn her brown as an egg, and then where will she be.

She runs in to watch him painting. He is telling her about the king, I think. Words come dipping and swaying, chewed and spat out of his old man's mouth. He can't hear what he sounds like, after all.

Upstairs, two peasants swing at each other with knotted clubs. He paints over the book a man holds in his hands; now he reaches down inside his breeches, his mouth lolling open like a sore. Behind him, a young woman laughs like a slice of lemon, big and sharp. Downstairs, a line of pilgrims snake across grey hills, opening wide black mouths in faces like stupid skulls. One of them is playing the guitar.

He says he is not sure if we will be able to move safely. He looks away across the fields, baking in the summer sun, as if he sees them coming for him right now, with their stupid mouths already open.

Rosario stops going out into the fields. She watches him paint.

He paints out the mantel I lean on, paints in a mound of earth like a grave. I watch from behind my veil.

 

When Rosario does not come in from the fields, I run out into the courtyard. The men have not seen her. She is not by the lemon tree, not watching lizards by the wall. I walk to the well. But I do not look down; I look across the fields, where the king's men will come with their guns and their mouths.

I look into the well. But there is only dark water.

I feel it then, his eyes on my back. And yes, he is standing at the window, watching me. The shutters, for once, are wide open. And he is smiling, a kind smile. I remember then that he is the sort of man who does not pinch. Rosario is there with him, of course, watching him paint. Of course she is.

 

We send the men out with lanterns to search through the fields, in the end. One of them goes down on a rope, to feel for her in the well. Darkness closes in like a wet mouth.

And, when I go to him, he is standing smiling, watching as on the wall Rosario floats, skirts curling round her, flying in her white dress through a brown sky. The paint is still wet. It moves just a little, I think, like hot meat.

He grins and points, saying something with his chewed-up words. She is safe, he says. Soon she will be safer still.

He bends and loads his brush with black paint.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Roll call of paintings mentioned in this piece, in order: 
> 
>  
> 
> [Judith_and_Holofernes](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_and_Holofernes_%28Goya%29)  
> [La_Leocadia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Leocadia)  
> [Two_Old_Men](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_Old_Men)  
> [Witches' Sabbath](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witches%27_Sabbath_%28The_Great_He-Goat%29)  
> [Atropos](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atropos_%28Goya%29)  
> [Saturn Devouring His Son](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn_Devouring_His_Son)  
> [The Dog](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dog_%28Goya%29)  
> [Asmodea](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asmodea)  
> [Fight with Cudgels](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fight_with_Cudgels)  
> [Man Mocked by Two Women](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_Mocked_by_Two_Women)  
> [A Pilgrimage to San Isidro](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Pilgrimage_to_San_Isidro)
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> Mentions of Goya's overpainting/revisions are accurate to the best of my knowledge. The English print mentioned is of [this](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Experiment_on_a_Bird_in_the_Air_Pump#/media/File:An_Experiment_on_a_Bird_in_an_Air_Pump_by_Joseph_Wright_of_Derby,_1768.jpg) painting.


End file.
